Loyola paying attention to present, not future

Edward Lee

Thanks to Saturday night’s 12-9 victory over No. 10 and two-time reigning Eastern College Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament champion Denver, Loyola (11-0) vaulted to the No. 2 spot in The Sun’s rankings and have a chance to match the program’s best start in school history with a win at Hobart this Saturday.

The Greyhounds were the recipients of a lot of love sent in their direction, but coach Charley Toomey did his best to keep his players grounded by downplaying the significance of the team’s first victory over the Pioneers in three attempts.

“I know it puts us on a bus going up to Hobart next Saturday,” Toomey said with a chuckle. “That’s all I know. And that’s what I’m going to talk about. It’s another league game, and this one is for the outright regular-season ECAC championship. We’ve already secured the No. 1 seed, but we don’t want to share it with anybody. So we’re just going to keep this team focused and talk about that. Do I think we have some significant wins on our resume? Sure we do. But that’s where this team has been so grounded and focused, and I think we’ve had some success because of that.”

With a strong resume that includes wins against No. 5 Duke, Denver and No. 19 Fairfield, Loyola could earn a top-8 seed in the NCAA tournament and play host to a first-round game for the first time since 1995.

But Toomey said he, the coaches and the players can’t get too far ahead of themselves as the team must still meet No. 9 Johns Hopkins April 28 and capture the ECAC Tournament in Denver May 2 and 4.

“There’s so much lacrosse left to be played,” Toomey said. “The ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] Tournament, Hopkins has some games left, all the conference tournaments are going to come into play with strength of schedule and RPI. All you can really do is look down and take care of your own business right now, and that will play out.”